


To live without a lifeline

by orphan_account



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, F/F, POV Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-25 00:23:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4939585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fierceness floods through her veins where blood should be and Death waits patiently to end her suffering. He has never seen someone suffer quite as much as Carmilla Karnstein. <br/>She is the saddest story he will ever tell. </p><p>The story of Carmilla Karnstein, as told by Death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To live without a lifeline

**Author's Note:**

> Um so this was partly inspired by my absolute need to get out of this weird, writers blocky, funk I've been in for too long and also by my love for the book thief, also I doubt I've done the sheer amazingness of that book any justice. Anyway, I hope you enjoy, and hopefully I'll be back with some more stuff soon. 
> 
> Title from Earth by Sleeping at Last.

Death is not a sentimental man, he’s not even really a man, to be perfectly honest. Caring is the one thing Death cannot be. He can be made into images of long black cloaks and glowing red eyes, bone tendril fingers holding a knife so sharp you can just make out the reflection of his shadowed, skeletal face, but _god forbid_ he cares.

Because really, Death isn’t a murderer, he is a ferryman. But even though the toll you pay to him is life, the toll he pays to you is humanity. So morality is balanced.

In a way.

Silently, Death sweeps into a ballroom. The air is thick around him, as it always is. Sometimes, in the strangest scenarios, people feel the change in the air shivering down their spine like a sliding ice cube. Sometimes, in the strangest scenarios, Death aches to be sensed. But that is another story, for another day.

This particular story begins in a ballroom, yellowy lit and laughing, as all ballrooms tend to be. Dancing with fast pace and smile adorning their faces, people of all ages swing together to the music flowing from the instruments being played by well-dressed young men in the corner. Death smiles as he walks in, not in a sadistic or smug way, but in a way which suggests he is gladder that these people will be taken happy. He prefers when their last moments are full of delight. It makes it easier.

This is when he sees her for the first time.

She is young, shaking her head with an apologetic smile as a red headed man tries to coax her out to the dance floor. Leaning against a wall, her white dress billows out around her, contrasting against her tanned skin and black hair. She holds a champagne glass in slender fingers and Death briefly thinks that if he were human, he too would be begging for a dance alongside the red-headed gentleman.

Then again, something tells him that he would be begging for a long time.

Maybe it’s the flush he catches creep up the girl’s cheek as she catches a glance from the daughter of a wealthy baron, whom Death had heard, not one minute ago, boast about how his daughter was going to marry ‘the finest young man in the country’.

Smirking to himself, Death stores that secret in his brain along with a million other bits of people’s private information he doesn’t need.

A scream echoes through the hall then, and the music cuts out. Looking up, Death sees a man fall to the ground, bleeding out from his neck at the foot of an elegant woman. She smiles as she looks up, her canines, too long to be classified as human, glisten with blood, and even Death quivers a little.

He has seen her face before, he realises, much later. Back in a blur, somewhere near the start of everything. Some ancient time ago that he just can’t place his finger on.

The world slows. Heavily, Death walks up to the man, still hoarsely screaming at the woman’s feet and softly touches his forehead. The screams die out.

Out of the corner of his eye, Death sees the room turn to chaos. He sees the scrambling, the panic, the banging on a locked door and the crying. He sees the girl cower in a corner, hidden behind a table and briefly he hopes that it’s good enough. Death is not a sentimental man but he wants her to live.

Gradually, he finds himself touching the forehead of everyone in the room, bending to the will of the inhuman woman, who is dressed so gracefully but has the soul of a demon. Together, they reach the girl and Death hears the woman chuckle maliciously.

“Such a pretty thing.” She murmurs and Death squeezes his eyes shut so he doesn’t have to watch the girl tremble backwards, her hair stuck to her forehead with the blood of her friends and her white dress now red. “I think I’ll keep you.”

Slowly, the woman leans in and drives her knife into the stomach of the girl. The girl gasps, her brown eyes opening wide with shock and pain. The woman pulls out the knife, eliciting another gasp and a whimper. Death watches with sorrow as the woman stabs again and again, until the girl slumps over at the fate of the woman’s crimson hand.

Mournfully, Death steps forwards, reaching out to take the girl away, before he is stopped by the woman’s voice. It is hauntingly beautiful, the way the woman goes from harsh murderer to softly speaking an incantation, crooning with care as she lifts up the girls limp body. Death takes another step forward, trying to reach out to the girl but something pushes him back

Finishing her chant, the woman stops suddenly, placing the body back down on the floor and stepping back. Slowly, Death steps back too, unsure as to why he cannot reach the girl.

Only moments later, his questions are answered, as the girls eyes snap open and send a shock through Death. She isn’t dead. Dead people can’t graciously stand up, their eyes blank and full of bloodlust. Dead people can’t bare their fangs and clumsily move to the nearest body on the floor, on legs that barely work. Dead people can’t suck fresh blood from the newly dead bodies of people they once loved, spilling crimson liquid down their already ruined dress, as the woman who made them into what they are watches with a satisfied smile embellishing her blood splattered face.

She isn’t dead, Death realises with horror, which means he has no business here. Slowly he turns around, blocking out the memories of what he just witnessed and trying to ignore the restlessness at the bottom of his stomach. It’s not easy for him to just walk out, but he does anyway, because it isn’t supposed to be easy.

*

He sees her face again and again after that. Whether its glimpses on the street or, more often than not, at a murder scene, he’ll always do a double take, remember her leaning casually against that wall at that party, champagne bubbles glowing from the glass in her hand. The perfect picture before the bloodbath.

She’s never alone, however, there’s always someone else who Death briefly recognises, as if they have come close to him a few times before. They are like her, he thinks, undead, immortal, destined to live as long as he does. Neither of them are actually alive.

Sometimes, he catches a sight of the woman who killed her all those years ago. Uneasiness still settles on Death whenever he does, as if he can’t get the murder out of his mind. He is too old to forget to care now, instead he sometimes lets it consume him as he sits on the street and waits for a man to slash his knife in the back alley.

His thought’s always trail back to her. She is a beauty, they all are. He has learnt since that her name is Mircalla, though he is not quite sure on that fact since it seems to change quite a bit. He sees her mainly with another woman, Matska, she was called by Mircalla. Matska seems kinder in the face than the sharp boned woman who killed Mircalla, but still holds an air of dominance. She is exquisite, a piece of artwork with rich skin and black hair and a laugh that echoes so loudly. He has only heard her laugh once at a murmured comment that seemed to make her collapse in hysterics. Death would’ve laughed too had he not been collecting the body of yet another girl that Mircalla had lured to death.

It kind of took the humour out of things.

Mircalla cries only a few times in the times that Death knows her. The first time is the ball, the second is one hundred and seventy five years after her murder, and it is arguably the most pain Death has ever seen her in and he saw her die.

It’s the same scenario, the one he has grown used to encountering in between his collecting of misfortunate people. There is a pit, gloomy and cold with jagged dirty rocks pointing out from every surface. The ground is flat and hard, up to the point where it stops and shoot vertically down like the drop-off in a coral reef. Stirring in the dark underneath is a god, Death can feel its presence there and it is unsettling, to be so near to something as significant as him.

He watches, as he usually does, the six girls who have been enchanted into the pit by Mircalla, scream against their ropes and gags as they are dragged up to the edge of the drop by the same two men, of which one is called Mervyn and one called William, which Death knows dues to the barked orders that always echo around the hollow stone walls of the pit.

This time it is different. There are no orders being barked, and behind the girls comes Mircalla, dragged on her knees by the woman who murdered her. She is crying, and Death cannot help but to be intrigued by the tears that seem to endlessly flow down the dirtied face of the girl. “Mother.” She pleads, her voice cracks. “You can’t, you can’t.”

The woman shoves her onto the ground with force, before speaking in a poisonous tone. “I can, my darling, and I will. I knew from day one that your sentiment would get the better of you. I should never have let Matska read you poetry, it makes you soft.” Death watches Matska shrink back into the shadows from where she is stood.

“Please.” Mircalla croaks out again, this time tuning away from her mother to face the girls. “Ell, you have to believe me I never meant to hurt y-” The woman strikes her across the face, hard and precise.

“Look at you.” She spits. “Pleading for her life, or yours. She could never love you, you are a monster. It is almost amusing to think you thought you were anything but.”

“Ell?” It’s pathetic, the word that seeps out of Mircalla’s mouth, but it still fill Death with pity.

“I’m sorry, Mircalla.” The last girl in line speaks softly, as if she is unsure of her words. “But your mother explained to me what you were. Look at these girls, lined up to die. You did that. I could never love you.”

Death almost admires her spirit.

“See darling, no human girl could love you.” The woman smiles smugly, satisfied with the way things have played out. “William, Mervyn.” She waves her hand. “Kill them.”

One by one, the girls get pushed off the edge and Death feels the god rumble in delight at its newly given sacrifice. One by one, Death swoops in and picks the broken girls off of the ground.

“I’m still in love.” Ell turns suddenly before being pushed off. “I know I shouldn’t be, and we could never be lovers, but I am. If it makes you feel better, I was always in love with you.”

Mircalla screams as Death picks up Ell’s broken body off the floor.

Death doesn’t see Mircalla again for another seventy years.

*

The next time they meet, the world is far changed. It is nineteen forty three, on a battlefield, and Death is busier that he has ever been.

He is just picking up the body of a nineteen year old boy who ran into one too many bullets when the ground shatters beneath him, revealing a cracked coffin case, chains broken around it. Much to the surprise of the soldiers around him, a blood covered arm slowly raises the lid of the coffin. It’s followed by a body, sitting up, drenched in crimson and features indistinguishable, but Death immediately knows who it is.

She walks, unaffected by the strange looks, out of the crater on legs that haven’t been used in a long time. With every step she clutches her chest and Death finds himself wondering if she’s finding it painful to breath after seventy years of drowning. Whatever it is, he wishes her luck in the new century. She’s going to need it.

*

When they meet again, her name is Carmilla and she’s different in every way. There is still a love for poetry and jazz and the philosophical meaning behind everything, but her love doesn’t touch her heart the way it used to. She is covered by a thick wall of apathy that not even Matska can break through. Everything is bitter on her tongue now and there is a harshness to her beauty. She doesn’t show up to the sacrifices anymore, though Death assumes she is still the one who lures the girls there.

There is a university built on top of the pit now, which Death has to admit is a good idea. Carmilla returns there every twenty years, to do her mother’s bidding, before skipping off again. Death has seen her in Paris, picking up some victims of a shooting. He’s seen her in Italy, when a man was run over in the middle of a street. He even saw her in China once, sneaking blood bags out of a hospital just as a woman’s life support machine was switched off.

She isn’t the cause of Death anymore, he just bumps into her occasionally.

Death finds he likes it better that way.

Silas University is a Death hotspot. The sacrifice happens every twenty years but he finds himself travelling back there a lot. However, the worst time Death returned, he didn’t actually go to the University, rather to a small town not too far away from it. There was a lake, frozen over from the harsh winter and covered in a soft dusting of snow.

Death finds his stomach sinking as he travels out to it only to find a four year old girl excitedly skipping across the lake, her cheeks red from the bitter air and snowflakes in her hair. “Look Mommy!” She exclaims, sliding across the ice. “I’m skating.”

Chuckling, her mother hands the picnic basket she is carrying to a man who Death assumes is the girl’s father. “Honey, you need skates for that.” Slowly, the woman slides out to meet her daughter. “But nice try.”

“I can skate anyway.” The girl giggles, sticking out her tongue. “You told me I could do anything if I tried hard enough.”

“You can sweetie.” The woman bends down to hug her daughter. “You could conquer the world if you set your mind to it.”

“Only if you and daddy are there.”

“We’ll always be here for you.” The woman grins. “Can you dance on the ice, pumpkin?”

“Yeah!” The girl smiles.

“Be careful guys.” Calls the dad, from the edge of the lake, and Death feels his stomach grow uneasy again.

“Look!” The girl wiggles her legs in a jerky motion. “I’m dancing!”

A loud crack echoes through the air and Death shuts his eyes, praying that the girl lives.

“Laura!” The woman screams. Crying erupts into the air and the dad scrambles out onto the lake to try and save his family.

Five minutes later, Death collects the body of the woman from the clutches of the icy cold water with a heavy heart.

*

Death sees the girl from the lake again, fifteen years later as he curiously follows Carmilla from the office of her mother, who killed a man to try and get her shining girl to drink fresh blood again, all the way back to Carmilla’s new dorm room. He doesn’t recognise Laura at first, it would be hard, remembering the name to the face of every person he’s deprived of a loved one. It would be tiring.

But it _is_ her. She’s nineteen, taller and feisty, with the same coloured hair and an immediate dislike to Carmilla.

Death smiles softly at the coincidence, (he long stopped believing in fate), and exits the room, having nothing else to do there.

*

The next time he sees them their dynamic is changed. Laura is crying on the floor of the pit, having rushed down to try and stop the sacrifices, which is something Death has been wishing to do for nearly three hundred years now. Except she didn’t manage it, not really.

She was brave, so stupidly brave in fact, running down to save her friends and eager to do the right thing. Death would applaud that sort of bravery had he not seen it kill so many people.

It would’ve killed her, he is sure of it, had it not of been for Carmilla. Carmilla who, last time he saw her, hated Laura and everything she stood for, now stands in front of the god who has controlled her life for centuries, holding a sword which is slowly eating her soul and looking like an angel in the luminescent glow the emerges from the pit.

Laura lies on the ground, bruised and beaten from charging at vampires and watches with tears in her eyes as Carmilla, haloed by light, turns and says something stupid before leaping into the pit with the sword held high above her head.

It is at this point that Death is certain he is here for Carmilla. But the he sees the dead bodies of William and Mervyn. Carmilla’s mother hangs from the pit and Death watches Laura push her off the edge as he kindly touches the old, suffering souls of the dead vampires. He doesn’t come back for Carmilla.

He doesn’t come back for her mother either.

*

Everything goes wrong. Death may as well stay at Silas University because people keep on dying. There are kids who were budding journalists, barely twenty with dreams to write in the biggest newspapers and Death watched as they were murdered in a way reminiscent to the bloodbath of the ballroom where Carmilla died. As he leaves, Death hears Carmilla’s voice drift in though the hall and he wanders slowly down the blood drenched carpet to find her and Laura snuggled up on a couch.

He feels as if he is intruding.

(He always is.)

*

He doesn’t see Carmilla for a long time after that. He notices some of Laura’s friends on his way to collect the bodies of students who didn’t quite make it to the end of the semester. He takes eight girls by the north side of campus, bodies mangled and strewn across the stone floor as if they are litter that someone has thrown onto the ground. It’s not pretty. But nothing Death sees really is.

_Don’t you think Death can be beautiful?_

Death himself is hollowed out, nothing but a perception of what he seems to be. And what he does, it is the opposite of beautiful.

But he still sometimes gets souls thanking them as he lifts their fragile bodies out of their misery. He sometimes gets kind words and murmurs of gratitude. Death sometimes brings along things like Carmilla Karnstein, and there is nothing quite as exquisitely beautiful as that.

He sees her again in fire. Matska dies in her arms and the anguished screams that follow take Death back to the night he picked a broken blonde girl out of the bottom of the pit.

She is rage in human form, a nightmare taken like a hurricane and pushed outwards. Cutting into the air, her harsh words bring tears from Laura’s eyes and slice through Death’s ancient skin.

He falls, with Laura’s tears and Matska’s blood, onto the carpet under the feet of Carmilla’s anger. His chest hurts and for the first time in centuries Death allows himself to _feel._

It comes crashing down then, like a stack of books which totter in slow motion for a few seconds before falling down with a shocking thud. All of Death’s emotions come seeping out of him like tar and he almost stays down on the floor, looking into the dead eyes of Matska Belmonde and feeling so much empathy for everyone in the room.

It was no one’s fault. Not Laura’s or Carmilla’s or anyone’s. It wasn’t even Death’s fault.

But he couldn’t help but think that it was as he taps Matska’s forehead.

*

Carmilla’s time is almost at an end, Death can see it now. There is a part of him filled with sorrow, at the ending of three centuries of life, but he also is excited to shake her hand and finally say everything he has ever meant to.

(He should feel bad, for the excitement, but he’s done feeling bad now. He was never supposed to feel anything.)

She has swollen sores, making their way across her wrists where the silver chain blisters her skin. Her mouth is covered in blood and Death lingers near to her as he has for the last few days. This time he is following a procession. Leading is an old man, who Death aches to remove the life from more than he should, but there is something in pure evil which makes Death’s skeletal fingers twitch towards the off switch.

Too bad there are rules.

Rules which entail Carmilla being paraded like a prized possession, an ultimate catch. Dragging her feet along with her chains she murmurs under her breath to herself in a language which Death can’t quite grasp. It seems sad, rhythmic like a poem and hiccupped out as if she wants to break down.

She won’t.

She is Carmilla Karnstein, and if Death knows anything it is that she will be strong to the last minute. Fierceness floods through her veins where blood should be and Death waits patiently to end her suffering. He has never seen someone suffer quite as much as Carmilla Karnstein.

She is the saddest story he will ever tell.

Because here she is now, forced onto her knees, bowed before Death but only looking up at the aghast face of Laura, who is bleeding and hardened and everything she wasn’t that day on the lake, all those years ago.

It’s funny how Death changes people.

He sees the look Carmilla gives Laura, how she never takes her eyes off her, as if she wants her face to be the last thing she sees. The light shines down on Carmilla’s brown eyes and, for the first time, Death sees her look frightened.

For the first time in almost three hundred years, Death sees her look human.

Stepping forwards, Death reaches out as the man raises his sword, ready to take the ancient soul of Carmilla Karnstein. He’s almost there, close enough to see where the blood on Carmilla’s face has dried, tightening her skin, when suddenly, he is pulled back.

And it is like all those times before, when Death has been just about to take her and she slips past him, as skilled in the art of sliding past death as others are in painting and music. She lives, as always, and Death takes the life of the man he was wishing to grasp.

But it only tastes bittersweet compared to how his fingers brushed against Carmilla’s hair.

*

Death is not a sentimental man, and he never will be.

He will never cry for dead children, and he will never avoid taking the souls of murder victims or the people time snuck up on, but when it is finally time for Carmilla Karnstein to pass, Death will be waiting with an open heart.

She deserves that.

He will shake her hand gently, and carry her, ever so carefully, away from her body, because Death is not sentimental, but he cannot wait to finally meet her.

And he is still waiting.

**Author's Note:**

> Come and visit me over at piegodess.tumblr.com if you feel like it. Also if you liked it kudos and comment because it's always nice to hear, but you know, you don't have to. Have a nice day or evening or early morning depending on how much of an idiot you are!


End file.
